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An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation?

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An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation? IZA DP No. 3811 An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation? Magnus Carlsson Dan-Olof Rooth DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES DISCUSSION PAPER November 2008 Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation? Magnus Carlsson Kalmar University Dan-Olof Rooth Kalmar University and IZA Discussion Paper No. 3811 November 2008 IZA P.O. Box 7240 53072 Bonn Germany Phone: +49-228-3894-0 Fax: +49-228-3894-180 E-mail: [email protected] Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No. 3811 November 2008 ABSTRACT An Experimental Study of Sex Segregation in the Swedish Labour Market: Is Discrimination the Explanation?* This paper studies whether sex discrimination is the cause of sex segregation in the Swedish labour market. The correspondence testing (CT) method was used, which entails two qualitatively identical applications, one with a female name and one with a male name, being sent to employers advertising for labour. The results show that females have a somewhat higher callback rate to interview in female-dominated occupations, while in male-dominated occupations there is no evidence of any difference. The conclusion is that the sex segregation prevailing in the Swedish labour market cannot be explained by discrimination in hiring. Instead, the explanation must be found on the supply side. JEL Classification: J64, J71 Keywords: sex discrimination, segregation, exit from unemployment Corresponding author: Magnus Carlsson Baltic Business School Kalmar University 39 182 Kalmar Sweden E-mail: [email protected] * We would like to thank Jan Ekberg, participants at seminars at Växjö University, the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation and Lund University, as well as participants at the 2007 ESPE Conference in Chicago and the 2007 EALE Conference in Oslo for their valuable comments. Klara Johansson provided excellent research assistance. A research grant from the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research is gratefully acknowledged. 1. Introduction The employment rate for females in the Swedish labour market is among the highest in the world. 1 However, from an international perspective the Swedish labour market is also highly segregated based on sex (le Grand, 1997; Löfström, 2005). 2 Occupational segregation between the sexes is in fact greater than the segregation between natives and immigrants (Ekberg and Rooth, 2004). Females tend to work in healthcare, education and the detail trade, whereas typical male jobs are engineering, construction work and truck driving. 3 Interestingly, occupational segregation explains a significant part of the non-adjusted sex wage gap in Sweden, which is about 16 percent. 4 Wages are on average lower for both males and females in occupations with a high share of females, and higher in occupations with a low share of females. Two important questions arise: 1) why is the labour market segregated with respect to sex, and 2) why are female jobs paid less? This study deals with the first question by studying a factor that potentially supports the prevalent segregation, namely the existence of sex discrimination in employment. 5 To measure the existence of sex discrimination, the correspondence testing (henceforth CT) method is used. Internationally, various forms of field experiments such as CT have become an increasingly common method for demonstrating both ethnic and sex discrimination (Riach and Rich, 2002; 2006). CT entails the researcher submitting qualitatively identical written job applications for actual advertised vacancies. The name assigned to the applications is the only difference, and reflect in this case the sex of the individual – one female and one male name. Each sent resumé is then recorded in terms of whether or not the applicant is invited to interview. The procedure is repeated for a sufficient number of vacancies in order to obtain a representative result. If the callback rates for the male and female applicant are significantly different, it must be due to sex discrimination 1 72.1 percent of women 16–64 years old were employed in 2006 (Labour Force Survey, Statistics Sweden, 2006). 2 In this article, segregation is simply defined as the share of females. An occupation is not segregated if 50 percent of the employees are males/females. An occupation is completely segregated if 0 or 100 percent of the employees are males/females. 3 Statistics Sweden, 2006. 4 Statistics Sweden, 2006. 5 In this article, employer discrimination is defined as occurring when two individuals are treated unequally in a hiring situation, even though their productive characteristics observed by the employer are identical. 1 since CT ensures that all individual productive characteristics are controlled for, something that is usually hard to accomplish using register data analysis. The degree of sex discrimination in 13 different occupations is analysed, including male-dominated, mixed and female-dominated jobs, making it possible to analyse its relationship with segregation. Finally, the characteristics of discriminating employers are examined. The results reveal that females have a somewhat higher callback rate in female-dominated and mixed occupations compared to males. In male-dominated occupations there is, perhaps surprisingly, no evidence of any differences in the probability of being invited to interview. Some simple calculations show that the slight difference in callback rate cannot explain the substantial sex segregation prevailing in the Swedish labour market. The conclusion is that the driving force must be found on the supply side. Focusing on the firm level, there are still individual employers treating the applicants differently. Using this variation to analyse the characteristics of employers shows that on the firm level neither the sex composition of employees nor the sex of the recruiter influence the difference in callback rate between the applicants. Further, public sector employers are, perhaps surprisingly, less likely to invite female applicants than males. The next section presents an overview of some existing theories explaining discrimination and segregation in the labour market. Section 3 describes the method, Section 4 summarises previous research, and Section 5 discusses data gathering and presents the descriptive results. Section 6 presents the empirical analysis, and interpretations and conclusions are presented in Sections 7 and 8. 2. Segregation and discrimination Sociologists and economists have proposed various theories to explain sex segregation in the labour market. On the demand side it is the existence of discrimination that can lead to segregation. 6 Sociologists explain discrimination as 6 The supply side can also affect the degree of segregation (this is kept constant in this experiment). On the supply side, sociologists’ and economists’ explanations also differ. The simplest sociological explanation is that individuals are socialised to an idea of female and male jobs when growing up (England, 2005). Classical economists, on the other hand, maintain that individuals strive towards maximising lifetime income, and that women are more likely to wish to combine work and family life (Polachek, 1981; 1985). 2 employers having a socially constructed image of what constitutes male and female jobs (England, 2005). This view is probably in line with what economists call statistical discrimination. This implies that employers expect a male to be more productive in occupations viewed as male jobs and females to be more productive in occupations viewed as female jobs (Phelps, 1972; Arrow, 1973). This is the first type of statistical discrimination where employers classify individuals on the basis of group belonging, following the qualification of the average member of that group instead of the qualifications of the individual. The second type of statistical discrimination implies that members of a group are discriminated against because employers view their productivity with different accuracy. In the case of sex discrimination it may not be obvious why employers would observe male and female productivity with different precision. The other main type of economic discrimination is Beckerian employer, co- worker and customer discrimination (Becker, 1957). Based on this theory, employers
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